Chapter 1. Return

First, there was mist. It was not dense, but rather damp and soft, like breath on glass. The air clung to my face and carried the smell of wet earth.

I was walking through the streets of a city in the body of a young woman.

The city carried a sense of deep history. It looked European, but in spirit it felt Russian.

I did not know her name, but I felt that I was her.

I was already in motion. As if I were continuing a path that had begun without me.

Everything happened naturally, as if I had always known where I was going.

Inside, there was a clear sense of purpose.

I am going to him.

 

Her memories began rising in my awareness: when they were teenagers, they had been close, but they had never become a couple.

He had told her more than once how he felt, but she could not return his feelings.

Back then, it was as if fear had paralyzed her will.

It happened after one day, while she was visiting his home, she accidentally overheard his parents talking:

“If he has fallen in love with that girl, this is a disaster, do you understand? They must not be allowed to be together. She will ruin his life!” his mother exclaimed in a loud whisper. “Look at who we are, and who she is, and her mother! The boy needs to go away to study, not get tangled up in love with some nobody...”

From that day on, she decided that she would never tell him she loved him.

Loved him more than life.

She let go of her dreams about him.

Not right away.

With a dull ache in her chest and the belief that she was unworthy.

She let him go to a foreign country, into a life where there was no place for her.

And he... having lost hope, accepted it. But somewhere deep inside, he still had not let go.

He accepted that there would be nothing more between them. And when he stopped resisting, he agreed to leave.

But several years later, he returned.

And today is that very day.

She wants to see him.

The fear is still there.

The same fear.

But now there is another fear too: the fear of confessing. Of admitting that she loved him. And still loves him.

What if he no longer loves her?

What if he has even forgotten her, and those feelings were only a temporary passion, an infatuation...

I hear her thoughts. They tangle and break off.

She was not asking herself why she was going to him.

Her feet simply carry her to where he is.

She tells herself that she only wants to see him. To support him.

I felt what was happening to her.

Yes, it will happen now or never.

I see a wall inside her, a blockade she once created.

But I will pass through it.

She will say it.

What she has to say.

Because if she does not, then they will drift apart like ships at sea.

Forever.

And both of them will be unhappy until the end of their days.

 

I see an old, beautiful house. The plaster has long been covered with mold and has lost its once grand appearance.

She enters the code on the intercom. I smell dampness in the entryway.

We go up to the floor.

The door is slightly open, as if someone is waiting for someone.

The apartment is dim.

From the kitchen doorway, the light of the street lamps glows faintly.

A shadow moves. We go toward it.

It smells of stale dust, as if the apartment has been empty for a long time.

Danya is sitting on the windowsill.

“His name is Danya. I hear this name in her head. Danya and Lera... Her name is Lera!”

I come closer.

His face is tired, slightly thinner. His hair is longer than before.

He came back recently. His father died. His mother had not lived with him for a long time.

All that remained was the apartment, empty, silent, drained of the energy of life.

He lifted his head, surprised, but said nothing. He had been waiting, but it was as if he could not believe she had appeared. We were silent.

I came even closer. We began to talk. Slowly.

About how he had left. About how everything had changed.

As if we were catching up with time, closing the distance their separation had left behind.

“Everything is different from how I imagined it,” he said. “I thought I would manage... That I would be able to start over. A new life in a new place. But everything came apart at the seams... I could not even come to my father’s funeral right away...”

I saw a wave of despair and hopelessness rolling over him. I saw how the ground had vanished beneath his feet after losing Lera.

Yes, he had tried to build new relationships, but he had never been able to let anyone into his life.

He was angry with his mother. He had been closer to his father.

His father’s death broke him completely.

Lera felt this, and that was why she was here.

With him.

 

She loved him.

For a long time.

In silence.

 

And I felt it inside her and inside myself, what it feels like when the soul is in pain, a strong burning that spread from the chest through the whole body. Together with her, I lived through her deep compassion for this man and the pain she felt for him. She was ready to take all his pain into herself. That was how deeply she loved him.

For a long time, I stayed silent. I did not interfere. I only watched. He needed to speak.

No, he was not complaining about fate. But the lost meaning of life could be read between the lines.

And then the moment came. He finished his story, and I wasted no more time. I stepped forward with complete resolve and began to speak, giving my charge no room to choose:

“I was afraid to say it. Always. Even when you were near me. Especially when you were near me.”

He looked at her tensely, without interrupting.

“I loved you. And I love you. And I will love you.

Always.”

Silence.

Deep silence.

Her heart and mine were pounding with excitement, anxiety, and relief. She could not believe she had said it out loud.

He exhaled.

 

I saw pain flash in his eyes, saw tears fill them. He pressed his lips together, trying to hold back his emotions, reached out his hand, and touched her, my cheek.

Carefully, as if touching something fragile.

I felt burning warmth spread through my chest again. Tears rushed from my eyes, as if a dam had collapsed and the flood had broken out.

Two souls gently intertwined in the long-awaited cradle of their love, a love that had slept for years, waiting for a powerful push to awaken and live at full strength.

Nothing could stand in their way anymore.

And then I felt it. Done.

What had to be said had been said.

 

A minute later, I felt the body begin to release me.

I leave softly and easily.

She remains in her life, happy, inside this moment that changed her forever. My heart is still beating in rhythm with hers, but I am already far away.

Leaving this transition was incredibly difficult.

After waking, tears streamed down my face.

I cried from joy, relief, and pain.

I felt unbearable sorrow for the lost years of their lives.

Her years.

His years.

The life they could have lived side by side, but lived apart, each with their own pain and silence.

I felt that loss as my own.

As if I had carried love inside me for so many years and stayed silent. As if time had been taken from me, time that could never be returned.

And together with that pain, an enormous relief rose inside me.

He still loved her.

Just as deeply.

All this time.

That realization was literally tearing me apart from within.

The tears kept flowing on their own, because in that old apartment, what should have happened many years earlier had finally happened.

It felt as if someone had died and then suddenly returned to my life, bringing the all-consuming happiness of finding them again.

The love I had touched there lived in me for a long time afterward.

I had entered too deeply into their feelings, their pain, their many years of silence.

Into the force with which she had loved this man all those years.

Almost the entire day was spent returning to myself.

Inside, their meeting still echoed, his voice, his gaze, that touch, and the release that came with the confession.

This story held me for a long time, as if part of my consciousness still remained beside them, in the dimness of that old apartment, in the moment where two lives had finally come together.